Applying the Science of Happiness: Finding Flow in Your Life and Practice

We will study a set of practical, research-based principles that can guide us towards happier, more engaged and deeply meaningful lives. Participants will gain both intellectual appreciation and no-nonsense skills in the arena of positive psychology, based on the work of groundbreaking innovators Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In the first four hours we will study Seligman’s pioneering work on enhancing satisfaction with the past, optimism about the future and happiness in the present. Along the way we will sample a collection of exercises documented to increase life satisfaction and decrease depression.

In the last two hours we will focus on Csikszentmihalyi’s revolutionary work on how a person enters flow—the state when we have deep, effortless involvement, are fully absorbed in activity, lose our sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. We will identify the eight traits of flow and how we can increase our access to them. Participants will learn how to bring more enjoyment to mundane tasks, pleasant activities, work activities and treatment settings.

By understanding how to integrate these skills—of increasing pleasures, engagement, meaning and the enjoyment of flow—into your own life, you will become a model for those whom you will help.